Featured Insight & Analysis

The Senate is expected to consider the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA, S. 754) on the Senate floor soon. The bill was marked up in secret, thereby denying the public an opportunity to better understand the risks the legislation poses. This document analyzes the bill as reported by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

State Location Privacy Survey
In just the last three years, state legislatures across the country have made important strides in securing privacy protections for location records generated by cell phones and other electronic devices. Those are the records that show where you are and where you have been based on communications between your mobile device and the nearest cellular tower,…

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The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA, S. 754) authorizes operation of countermeasures. These could include deployment of hazardous software that can damage external systems, data, and devices. CISA authorizes operation of countermeasures notwithstanding any other law. The limitations on this authorization are insufficient to prevent harms.

Recently, the Technical Architecture Group (TAG) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a group within the W3C charged with stewardship of the Web’s architecture, released a statement that “unsanctioned tracking” is harmful to the web. Specifically, the TAG noted three types of unsanctioned tracking technologies that are especially harmful to users’ privacy: browser fingerprinting, super cookies, and header enrichment.

New Hampshire became the ninth state to enact legislation reigning in warrantless law enforcement access to location records generated by cell phones and other electronic devices. Location records show where you are and have been, based on communications between your mobile device and the nearest cellular tower, and other electronic location tracking techniques such as GPS. The New Hampshire legislation prohibits the government from obtaining “location information from an electronic device without a warrant issued by a judge based on probable cause and on a case-by-case basis.”

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Reforming ECPA

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act was created in 1986, before emails, cloud computing, and social networking were mainstream. CDT is fighting for much needed reform of ECPA to require a warrant for any searches of your private online communications.